Human Free Will vrs God's All-Knowing Nature

I was generalising. I certainly do not want to imply that each and every Christian shuns the quest for knowledge. It's just saying that an active search for understanding is much more stressed by Islam and Judaism. There is very little anti-intellectualism among Jews and where Islam seems to be backward, it more of a cultural thing that something ingrained in the religion, but of course, my understanding of Islam is limited.

chrisd, can you explain why you are Catholic?
Also, I don't really see how you not finding a church that believes in reason would make you an atheist. Can you explain?

Was catholic, spend couple of years in many other types of christian denominations, got into trouble and got kicked out. Only in the catholic tradition do I get support, so catholic again.

It's true that the Catholic Church is a very big house that accomodates a lot of different people. As I already mentioned before, I come from what used to be a very Catholic country and a lot of people in my family were and still are deeply religious.
What makes me appreciate Catolics over Protestants is that usually they are not the judging kind. You can have fulfiling relations with them, even though you may have very different worldviews.
On the other hand, there are quite a few nutcases among Catholics as well. I wouldn't want to be caught in the same room as the followers of Josemaria Escriva or Msgr. Lefebre.

Yes, I agree with that.

Well, I think taking physics and adding some sort of sacred nature to it is a bit odd. Some people have suggested, in fact, that we now worship Quantum Mechanics as though it were sacred, that they've replaced the cross with a black hole. I think that's sort of ridiculous. It's fascinating, but it's certainly not sacred. But we will not, I think, understand what love means, or what the connection we have with God. So, I don't think we should ascribe that sort of special, sacred significance to it. It's the blueprint, if you will, a sort of a sketchy diagram.

It's interesting when you read of the life of Christ how much of his time he spent here healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that. He was modeling for us what it is that we are intended to do by following in his path. So, I think the mandate for us as human beings to reach out to those who are suffering and try to heal their illnesses is a very strong one, and it's entirely consistent with strong faith. In fact, it's one of the strongest mandates we have.

To say that genetic engineering is unacceptable across the board because of its potential for creating some ethical dilemmas is the most unethical stance of all. It's to basically say, here is a powerful approach which could alleviate human suffering, but we're not going to do it because we're worried about the misuses that might occur, I find that completely unacceptable from every possible point of view. Most profoundly, the theological one.

What it does do is to require us to assume some responsibility for deciding which kinds of genetic engineering are, in fact, consistent with that mandate to heal the sick, and which kinds are putting us in a troubling direction where we'd best not go. And that is obviously where the debates begin to get underway.

It's hard for me to pinpoint a precise way in which my personal faith has aided my ability to be a scientist. It certainly aids my perspective. Science has a way of being a real roller-coaster experience. Most of your experiments fail, most of your hypotheses are wrong. If you get so personally tied up in your own worth coming from the success of your research, you can be pretty down on yourself sometimes. It helps me, certainly, to have a different perspective of who I am, who God is, and sort of the eternal significance of what's going on here. And, therefore, it's easier not to get so completely rattled when something scientifically goes badly, because it often does.

And at those wonderful moments where something does go right, the opportunity to see that not only as a scientist, but also as a person of faith, and to feel that kind of blessing, that kind of connection with the creator who knew all of this ahead of time, is one of those aspects of my existence that I wouldn't trade for anything.

I can connect to that feeling, especially as a physicist, you are so far on the edge of human knowledge that it can be hard. I guess that would be less of a problem for people involved in the historical sciences.

It does however seem to be an emotional need rather than an intellectual one. It must have a lot to do with the environment in which you grew up in and were socialised in. What gives meaning to our lives is an intensely personal thing and a projection of on's specific frame of reference is not very fruitful.

I have a friend doing genetics in Oxford. In the reading of the genetic code some sequences are sometimes used and sometimes skipped, so that their skipping would not alter the reading frame of the downstream ones. This constraint, nobody knows why.

I think a fundamental difference between ourselves is that you label that what you don't know as God. I do not label it at all. For me, there is no possible knowledge that falls ouside the scope of rational scrutiny. Faith is entirely unnecessary.

If you mean that one does not need faith to do science, you are right. There other things that are not science. That not make them wrong or have no purpose, they just mean they are not science. Music and love for example. I'm not trying to explain everything though.

I tell you, considering physicists here, that some came up with ideas and concepts that fell ouside the scope of rational scrutiny, yet were proven right. Example is non conservation of energy and parity violation.

Sorry to all the lawyers and other practitioners of a legal profession in here, but I find law the most intellectually unchallenging thing to study. You need a good memory and a minimal level of common sense, intelligence is not even required.
What I actually want to say is that I do not want my professional and social situation to prevent me from increasing my overall  knowledge and understanding.

I'm not capable of this level of shallowness. I'd rather die.

You got me lost here.

Anyway, have we conclusively established that Free will is incompatible with God's all-knowing nature?

I have, but I'm affraid not all participants in this thread follow me in my reasoning.